The Penticton Museum is putting together an exhibit about Penticton.
The exhibit, titled ‘Home Grown, Celebrating Childhood in Penticton Past and Present’ is being produced in-house and is expected to run from late April to early August.
“It’s a thematic exploration of childhood as was experienced in Penticton,” said curator Dennis Oomen. “We’ll be using a lot of images, text, artifacts, and there will be interactive components such as games and so forth. There will be themes of school, family, friendships, rites of passage, sports, work and chores, belonging, toys and games.”
While the museum has held all kinds of exhibits in the past, from medieval to cookbooks, it has never held one on childhood before, especially one about childhood in Penticton.
“We have an excellent photograph collection, we’ve been going through it and finding so many fantastic pictures,” Oomen noted. “They’re heavily weighted between the 1940s and 60s, but we have some earlier ones as well.
“What’s interesting about this exhibit is that all of the pictures are from Penticton, and they’re all of real people. People will be coming in and seeing pictures of themselves and people they know. It makes it very personal, and almost intimate.”
The museum is attempting to gather as many pictures and other memories as it can for the exhibit, and are asking people to share their memories and photographs with them using the hashtag #HomeGrownPenticton on Facebook.
“We’re still shaping this exhibit, so we’re encouraging people to come forward with stories, artifacts, photographs, you name it,“ Oomen said. “We’ve found documents such as a whole series of school assignments from the 1960s. So we have a whole group of photographs, and then a written piece for each one about what they like about school and what they like to do, all from the 1960’s.”
Oomen noted they have had a great response on the museum’s Facebook page to the request for memories, and he added the best way to share something is either to give him a call at 250-490-2452 or email him at Dennis.Oomen@penticton.ca.
The museum has a deadline of collecting memories set in the middle of April, and Oomen recommended keeping an eye on the Penticton Museum and Archives for further information about the upcoming exhibit.